• She worked as a 10 Jul 1553-19 Jul 1553 Proclaimed Queen of England. 5,74,116,174

Wife's General Notes

http://www.britannia.com/history/ladyjane/janefram.html LadyJane Grey entered the Tower of London as Queen of England on 10July 1553. This impressive fortress, that was to be her palace,became her prison. Seven months later she would be beheadedwithin its walls, her body hastily placed beneath the floor ofthe Chapel Royal, without ceremony. She was in her seventeenthyear. How did this pious, intelligent, and worthy young womancome to wear the crown she did not desire and had never sought?What forced her cousin, Mary I, to sign Jane's death warrant?What qualities did Jane possess to stand up to England's mostpowerful man, John Dudley Duke of Northumberland?

She and Guilford were escorted to the Tower of London where shewas proclaimed queen on July 10, 1553.

http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon45.htmlElizabeth I (1558-1603 AD) Elizabeth I was born in 1533 toHenry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Although she entertained manymarriage proposals and flirted incessantly, she never married orhad children. Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, died at seventyyears of age after a very successful forty-four year reign.Elizabeth inherited a tattered realm: dissension betweenCatholics and Protestants tore at the very foundation ofsociety; the royal treasury had been bled dry by Mary and heradvisors, Mary's loss of Calais left England with no continentalpossessions for the first time since the arrival of the Normansin 1066 and many (mainly Catholics) doubted Elizabeth's claim tothe throne. Continental affairs added to the problems - Francehad a strong footland in Scotland, and Spain, the strongestwestern nation at the time, posed a threat to the security ofthe realm. Elizabeth proved most calm and calculating (eventhough she had a horrendous temper) in her political acumen,employing capable and distinguished men to carrying out royalprerogative. Her first order of business was to eliminatereligious unrest. Elizabeth lacked the fanaticism of hersiblings, Edward VI favored Protestant radicalism, Mary I,conservative Catholicism, which enabled her to devise acompromise that,basically, reinstated Henrician reforms. Shewas, however, compelled to take a stronger Protestant stance fortwo reasons: the machinations of Mary Queen of Scots andpersecution of continental Protestants by the two strongholds ofOrthodox Catholicism, Spain and France. The situation with MaryQueen of Scots was most vexing to Elizabeth. Mary, inElizabeth's custody beginning in 1568 (for her own protectionfrom radical Protestants and disgruntled Scots), gained theloyalty of Catholic factions and instituted several-failedassassination/overthrow plots against her cousin, Elizabeth.After irrefutable evidence of Mary's involvement in such plotscame to light, Elizabeth sadly succumbed to the pressure fromher advisors and had the Scottish princess executed in 1587.The persecution of continental Protestants forced Elizabeth intowar, a situation which she desperately tried to avoid. She sentan army to aid French Huguenots (Calvinists who had settled inFrance) after a 1572 massacre wherein over three thousandHuguenots lost their lives. She sent further assistance toProtestant factions on the continent and in Scotland followingthe emergence of radical Catholic groups and assisted Belgium intheir bid to gain independence from Spain. The situation came tohead after Elizabeth rejected a marriage proposal from Philip IIof Spain; the indignant Spanish King, incensed by English piracyand forays in New World exploration, sent his much-feared Armadato raid England. However, the English won the naval battlehandily, due as much to bad weather as to English naval prowess.England emerged as the world's strongest naval power, settingthe stage for later English imperial designs. Elizabeth was amaster of political science. She inherited her father'ssupremacist view of the monarchy, but showed great wisdom byrefusing to directly antagonize Parliament. She acquired undyingdevotion from her advisement council, who were constantlyperplexed by her habit of waiting to the last minute to makedecisions. She used the varying factions (instead of being usedby them, as were her siblings), playing one off another untilthe exhausted combatants came to her for resolution of theirgrievances. Few English monarchs enjoyed such political power,while still maintaining the devotion of the whole of Englishsociety. Elizabeth's reign was during one of the moreconstructive periods in English history. Literature bloomedthrough the works of Spenser, Marlowe and Shakespeare. FrancisDrake and Walter Raleigh were instrumental in expanding Englishinfluence in the New World. Elizabeth's religious compromiselaid many fears to rest. Fashion and education came to the forebecause of Elizabeth's penchant for knowledge, courtly behaviorand extravagant dress. Good Queen Bess, as she came to called,maintained a regal air until the day she died; a quote, from aletter by Paul Hentzen, reveals the aging queen's regal nature:"Next came the Queen in the sixty-fifth year of her age, as wewere told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled;her eyes small yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked;her lips narrow... she had in her ear two pearls, with very richdrops... her air was stately; her manner of speaking mild andobliging." This regal figure surley had her faults, but the lastTudor excelled at rising to challenges and emerging victorious.

Elizabeth refused to acknowledge that she was ageing. She worea wig (as she had lost much of her own hair), whitened her faceto hide the scarring from the smallpox, and even rubbed urineinto her face to remove wrinkles. She could not hide herblackened teeth arising from her love of sugar.